Ruminations on Mom 3.0

As my Facebook page now proudly says, “I used to have a life. Now I have a book.” Blogging is a luxury right now, but I found this photo this morning and gave myself permission to write a quick post about Mom 2.0 and Mom 3.0

Mom 2.0

First, the Mom 2.0 Summit was tremendous. It was terrific to reconnect with good friends and make some new ones as well. As for the rest, I’ll just leave it at, What she said:

Mom 3.0

In tech, versioning — 1.0, 2.0 etc. — is a convention normally reserved for denoting the latest rendition. The most recent and presumably advanced. In that context, Mom 2.0, generally and as coined by the founders of the Summit, means the new Mom. Not new as in recent. New as in not like June Cleaver, Edith Bunker, Maude or even Elyse Keaton and Joyce Summers.

In the real world, however, it also means phases. It recently dawned on me that I am entering Mom 3.0 — the tween and teen years. I think it breaks down something like this:

Mom 1.0 — Pregnancy or adoption, new mom, the toddler years. Ends when your child is about 4 or 5 and goes to school
Mom 2.0 — Elementary school. Kids are increasingly independent but still willing to be seen in public with you.
Mom 3.0 — Tweens and teens. Culminates in a driver’s license.
Mom 4.x — Young adults. Through college and beyond. They leave. They come back. And so on.

Now, I know this isn’t absolute. Someone could have children in two or more phases, but we can use this break-down to understand the evolution of mom blogs.

In 1.0, parenting is all new (and scary). Blogging is about finding your online tribe. The people who are going through the same scary transition as you. Yes, the topic is your kids, but you are really writing about your response to your kids.

2.0? This is the shift we’ve been seeing lately in the first group of successful mom blogs. The content is shifting, becoming less about the process of parenting and more about the family. More about the mom and her other interests. Many women start new projects that are only loosely related to their parenthood.

And a new group of new mothers will start a new 1.0 tribe.

What will happen when the mass of mom blogs reaches 3.0? Who knows, but I think you can look to the blogs of women whose children are in this age group for some clues.

Many of us never really wrote about parenting at all. Like me. Some of my writing is about mom blogs. It isn’t a mom blog. Others, like my friend Joanne who writes PunditMom, write about the experiences of parenting through a very different lens than the process of being a parent. In her case, it’s politics.

It’s funny. You can’t keep ‘em from growing by putting them in a smaller pot.